We have been using TDO-MiniForms for years and have loved it! It has been a GREAT way to get User-Generated Content. What other alternatives do we have if we leave TDO-Mini-Forms. Ideally, we want to stick with it, but I am afraid of bugs as WordPress evolves and updates. Is there a chance we could pay you to do an individual product/plugin for us that is almost identical to TDOMF? If not, please let me know which one would be best to use moving forward that accomplishes the same task…

I just wanted to say, I feel your pain. Thanks for making the plugin! I’m currently torn between using yours and another one. It does give me pause that there could be problems with upgrading for plugins that aren’t actively maintained. I’ll chime in with someone else and say that I agree with the premium paid model for plugin’s that are kept updated. Have you considered farming out the bug fixing and overall maintenance to another team (for premium) and taking on more of a management/oversight role?

I’m trying to use the category widget as a checkbox option. If I try to specify the categories to include, no categories display in the form. Only when I leave that section blank am I able to see the categories in the form.

In the exclusion box, I’ve tried to enter all of the categories not to include and still no luck.

Can you suggest what I could be doing wrong? This plugin seems to be exactly what I need, if I can get it working.

I have tried to install the mini forms plug in for my blog, but every time, it comes up with fatal error and locks me out of my blog. I have to go to the my hosting website and remove the plugin before I can get back into the blog. I am fairly new to this blogging and need to have this up an running soon.

I really feel with you, and all the great theme and plugin devs I have seen giving up, fighting with the same frustration you are writing about.
I’m by myself a developer, and have joined the wordpress community 3 years ago.

From there on I saw great devs leaving the boat in the same frustrated situation.
To just mention some, like Burt Adist, ck from bb-press or just recently Jeff Jayres from Buddypress and many more.

When I came to WordPress, I already enjoyed a great ecosystem and for the first I tried it the wp way.
I developed some plugins and themes, gave them away for free and was looking what can I get from donations, I wanted to believe in a world working like this.
And I guess this is the motivation of many others.

But with the time I found myself back in exactly the same situation.

This was the moment, where I already was home and felt familiar in the WordPress – and in my case – Buddypress world.
From a great developer, I read a forum post around this time about ways to keep yourself motivated.

And from this moment everything worked fine for me, but wasn’t anymore 100% THE WP WAY.

What I did,

I started to take a fee for my plugins. For todo mini forms, for example, I would make a pro version for 39$ and 3$ updates a month.
I was afraid, people will be angry, but in the end it was the opposite, it was like you write in the beginning again.

People were thankful that the dev became more serious.
That they can now build projects based on my work without to be afraid to work with unsupported plugins and themes in the end.
In the end I felt my users/customers were more happy, and me too.

I keep the free plugins alive but firstly I put all my work for features/bug fixes in the premium versions.
The free ones: from time to time I update them, but the pro version is a month before.
This is a great way to still have the WP repository as a place to find your plugin and use it for free, as a free demo for example.
The professional users, all people who will make money, will pay you for the plugin and the updates, and the free users will never complain.
They will thank you for this kind of philosophy.

I’m 100% sure, this situation should be addressed from WordPress.org (Automattic) to help keep Developers happy.

We all need to live a life. We are not in a dream fun world.

I hope, it would be possible, to have premiums themes and plugins listed in the plugin and theme area in WP.
So it would be more normal to have basic free and premium paid stuff in WordPress. Like it’s normal in the apps world.

To have a hobby is great, but if your hobby becomes an essential part in other’s work-lives, things become difficult.
Maybe you think about it as a process, we all go through together. It’s great we all start with the FREE in our mind but the truth is, step by step people leave frustrated.
Time to find the middle way. For me what I have written now works. And it feels more realistic and truthful than ever before.
Thanks for all your work, it would make me happy to see you in the premium world.
Would be really bad luck for the whole community to loose you, even leaving frustrated.